What will fail without maintenance
A Scimitar GTE is a fantastic car. Great fun to drive.
Too bad some people think that a Scimitar does not need maintenance.
They really do need it! This will not be a page with all the weaknesses
of Scimitars, just a page where you can see what happens if you don't
take care of your car. Some guys/girls have badluck and have all the
trouble created by lack of maintenance because they bought a car from
someone who didn't care.
At this moment I only have a few pics, and I am not likely to get more
myself, because my cars seem to be in good shape (yes, it took some
time and money...).
Front Suspension
These are the bushes from the lower part of the front suspension.
The upper one is new, the lower one has been used for too many
miles (> 15,000 mls) The material is rubber. These are from
my car.
I noticed that the rubber bushes are worse than they used to
be. Something confirmed by Geert van Hout. Now for the first
time I decided to use poly-urethane bushes. Wait and see which
are better.
A hint fitting PU bushes: Use a lot of grease. Grease as much
as you can, both the bushes as the wishbone arms. It makes the
fitting a lot easier and protects the bushes when fitted.
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On this example, the trunnion and the vertical link have been
seperated the wrong way. The thread on both objects has dissappeared.
The materials ground themselves. The trunnion (lower) is bronze-like,
the verticallink (upper) iron. Not visible in this picture, but
there is a grease nipple on the verticallink. If you don't feed
it with grease (plain high melting point grease, nothing special)
this is what might happen. On this car it collapsed when it was
doing 80 km/h | 50 mph. A loud CLONCK and burning rubber stopped
the car, impossible to move. The weight of the car was resting on
the wheelarch and destroyed it just enough to keep the owner from
the pub for a few days. In this case the owner (Chris Pallasch)
was lucky (and so was I because I was a passenger when it happened).
Just the damage to the front suspension, tyre and body. If this
had happened on a busy road, or with 150 km/h | 94 mph..... Advise:
grease your front suspension regularly, top-balljoint, vertical
link and don't forget the trunnion bolt!
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Fuel line etc. |
| When you don't use your Scimitar so often, or for other reasons
the fuel line can become spongy. When petrol starts leaking over
a hot engine or manifold you'll get a fire! And it can destroy your
car for good. The car on the picture used LPG as main fuel. When
the owner ran out of LPG, he switched to petrol. Unfortunately rubber
fuel lines tend to get spongy when they aren't used. Or another
possible reason, the float was stuck and flooded the carburator.
In this case fuel started leaking immediatelly over the hot engine
and it caught fire. The car was so damaged that it was beyond repairing.
Don't be fooled, even the alloy wheels and tyres burnt! The steel
ones are for transport. |
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| Wanted: more " what went wrong
pictures" preferably with story. Please
send it to me |
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